The state work safety watchdog announced in Beijing on Monday
that, to date, 497 officials have withdrawn their investments in
coalmines.
Li Yizhong, director of the State Administration of Work Safety,
said that these are only preliminary figures based on reports filed
from nine provinces including Guizhou, Hunan
and Hebei.
A final national report will be released by mid-October, Li
said.
China issued a circular on August 30 requiring all officials
with investments in coalmines to withdraw their stakes by September
22.
According to the circular, any official failing or refusing to
do so would be removed from his post.?
Among the 497 officials who have done as instructed, 325 are
government officials and 172 are company officials in state-owned
enterprises (SOEs), Li said.
Collusion between mine owners and officials is to blame for the
spate of accidents in coalmines, industry insiders said. Some
coalmines are owned, or partly owned by local officials. As a
result of which, many escape mandatory inspection.
In the Daxing coalmine disaster, which claimed 123 lives in Guangdong
last month, the mine owners turned out to be local people's
congress delegates.
In March, an explosion killed 18 miners in Heilongjiang.
The owner of the Xinfu Coal Mine was the deputy director of the
local work safety administration.
The fat profits to be had in China's coalmining business have
created overnight millionaires in the past year. And others are
lured by the promise of fortune.
Coalmine owners in north China's Shanxi
Province reportedly said that everybody knows the coal industry
is profitable, but only those who have connections with local
officials can make money.
Some government officials hold stakes in the local small
coalmines. But they are not technically investors. Their power
drives mine owners to give them free shares, said a mine owner in
north China's Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Li said the agency will crackdown on officials who either have
investments in coalmines or hold the so-called free stakes.
(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2005)